by D. B. Green
Victoria shudders. “I fear what you would do if she were. I got a tiny glimpse of your anger. There was no…” She stops talking and sits up. “What is she pointing at, though?” she asks, glancing at the corner of the room.
“It looks like she’s pointing at…” I turn to Victoria. “Wait a minute… You can see Penny?”
Victoria grabs my arms. “Don’t say anything,” she whispers. Her eyes open wide. “Don’t tell my dad or Stephanie. Please.”
“OK,” I say. “I won’t.”
“Thank you,” she whispers. “If my dad knew I was sensitive to your Affinity connection, he wouldn’t let me stay here with Stephanie.”
“Right,” Teddy says. “I’ve got the CCTV working.”
I help Victoria up from the sofa. She seems so frail. Guilt swamps over me like a storm cloud. Is it my fault she’s like this? She wraps her black coat tight around herself as we join the others at the desk. The monitor shows a view of the living room from last night; I watch Penny sitting on my lap. My heart skips a beat.
“Sorry,” Teddy says. “I’ll fast forward.”
The footage plays fast. The clock counter scrolls through the hours into early this morning. It shows my mad dash out of the bedroom to make my way back to Anne’s before she could realize I was gone. Then Penny rushes out, wearing my shirt, on the way to meet her secret contact.
Steve glances at his watch as the counter continues to fast forward through the minutes. “Stop it now,” he says.
The footage slows to normal speed just as Penny runs into the room. Her back is to the camera as the van driver yanks at her coat. She lets go of her coat and the driver falls back onto the floor, banging his head on the coffee table.
“It’s a shame there’s no sound,” Stephanie says.
My hand reaches for Penny’s cell phone in my pocket - but I can’t bear to hear her scream again.
The camera footage shows Penny’s phone call to me, then she drops to her knees as she slides her phone under the sofa. She kisses the twine ring and then removes it, leaving it on the floor as a marker. Then she gets back to her feet, but the driver hits her with the butt of his gun. She falls to the floor in front of the sofa. I get a sudden jab of pain in my temple and the rage bubbles again inside me.
Church turns around. “She left her mobile phone.”
I pull it out of my pocket. “Yeah, we know. But it’s out of power,” I say, my heart filling with sadness at the sight of Penny sprawled out on the screen. She reaches for the twine ring, stroking it with her finger. I rub my thumb over it too. I will find you, Penny. I hope you can feel this… feel me. Whatever it takes. I will find you.
Church leans in close to the screen. “He’s fitted her with a Desino Lapse,” he says, glancing over his shoulder. He stares at the spot where Penny was lying on the floor.
The same silver and blue band wraps around her chest on the screen. Just like her ghost, and just like the one around Mr. Randall in the crypt. It sits over her shirt… My shirt.
The footage flickers as the air around Penny suddenly freezes into a block of ice. The driver then covers Penny with a white sheet while he talks on his cell phone. He drops the contents of the crypt file into the trash can and sets it on fire. As the file burns, he stuffs Penny’s computers into a duffel bag and then he pushes the sheet covered Desino Lapse out of the living room.
“What the hell did he do to Penny?” Teddy says, his mouth wide open. “Is she dead?”
Church walks over to the sofa. He kneels and strokes the floor where The Desino Lapse formed around Penny. “She was frozen in a piece of time, Mr. Chen.”
Church knows his name… All of our names.
He taps the floor. “She’s not dead. They’ll want to extract her magic.”
Teddy glances at Steve, shaking his head. “What the hell is going on?”
“Come on, Mr. Chen. Don’t play the innocent,” Church says. “You know all about what’s going on here in Meridia Falls.” Church pulls a folded piece of paper from his jacket pocket. It’s the same front page of Penny’s newspaper that she showed me. The Bizarre News Bulletin. He taps at the ghost sighting story at the bottom of the page, drawing his finger in across at the headline.
Ghost of a Young Woman Seen On Meridia Falls Main Street by Arnie Wilmot
“This is you, isn’t it? You are Arnie Wilmott, are you not?”
Steve turns to face Teddy, wrapping his arms across his chest.
Teddy holds up his hands. “Yes, OK. That’s me. That’s my penname. I was working for Penny on the paper. My dad prints it at a discount for her.”
Steve rubs his hand through his hair. “Jesus Christ, Teddy! Does my dad know?”
Teddy shakes his head. A half smile forming on his lips. “Nope. The Sarge would kill me if he knew I was slipping Penny confidential files.”
The crypt. “You’re Penny’s contact from this morning. You got her those crypt plans.”
“Yeah,” Teddy nods and scratches his head. “I got two copies printed at the Town Hall this morning.”
Maz slams her hand down on the desk. “What do we do now?”
“Oh… my… God!” Stephanie’s jaw drops. She points at the monitor. “I can see Penny’s ghost… On the screen.” She spins around, staring at the corner where Penny ghost still stands. Stephanie walks into the middle of the room, waving her arms at the camera. “I can’t see her… but the camera can. How is that possible?”
Teddy leans inside the safe. “I don’t think it’s the camera. I think it’s the computer,” he says. “I kind of borrowed a server that was impounded at the station. It was from a company that Penny was tracking. I’ve been running tests on it.” He scratches the side of his head. “It’s faster than anything… Faster than anything out there now. Way too advanced…”
Church pulls out a note pad and pen. He scribbles on a page and then rips it out. “When you check the hardware inside,” he says, narrowing his eyes. “Did anything have this company name on them?” He turns the page around.
MRE-Tek
Teddy takes the page. He nods. “Yeah, that’s them. MRE-Tek. This logo was stamped on the processor.” He scratches his head, turning to the filing cabinets. “Penny had a file on them, somewhere.”
Stephanie raises her eyebrows. “I’m surprised she knows anything about them. They’re part of a secret initiative - developing magic technology.” She turns to Teddy. “But how in the hell did you get hold of their processors?”
“The Sarge busted a drug shipment passing through town a couple of months ago. The perps had just boosted a supply truck on Route Fourteen. They said the server was in a cooled crate. So, naturally it piques my interest.”
Victoria leans over the desk. “If the MRE-Tek processor can pick up Penny’s ghost signal…” She spins around. “Then we should be able to track it… Track her.”
Church suddenly claps his hands together. “Right. You kids get back to school…” He glances at Steve. “And work. Leave this to us.”
“No way am I leaving,” I say. “I’m gonna find Penny.” I walk over to the desk, but Stephanie cuts me off before I can get to Victoria. Her eyes open wide as she presses her hands to my chest, forcing me back. She moves her hand and slips her finger through the hole in my shirt, pressing her finger to my skin.
Her eyes instantly sparkle brown as time freezes, and I’m sucked into her mind, staring at my own sparkling orange eyes. Then, I’m hit with Stephanie’s memory vision. I’m standing in Penny’s apartment just before we arrived. She’s talking with Church. “We need to tell them everything. They’re Enchanters like us. They have a right to know the truth.” Frustration boils in Stephanie’s mind as Church waves away her protests. I can feel her thoughts. She wants to help us. I know I can trust her… The vision suddenly ends and I’m back in my own mind. Time moves forward again.
“You can trust me, Logan. We’re here to help.” Her eyes open wide and she slowly nods her head. Then she glances at Church.
“You need to carry on as normal. People are watching you at school… Maybe at home.” She pulls her hands away and points at each of us. “They’ll be watching you all now. You need to be careful.”
Teddy barges past to the desk. He leans in close to Victoria as she examines the server in the safe. “I can help with this. I’m pretty good with computers.”
“So is my daughter, Mr. Chen. She’s more than qualified. She’s worked for MRE-Tek in the past.”
Victoria turns and shakes her head at Teddy. “And you thought you’d set this up right? You have no idea what this system is capable of. It’s far more than just a computer.” She half-smiles as Four ushers us to the door. “Come back after school. We should have some news by then.” Her eyes drift to Teddy. “And I might show you what this thing can do.”
Church glares at his daughter, then nods his head.
Penny’s bag hangs on the back of the living room door; the corner of the crypt plans poke out of the top. Church’s attention is focused on his daughter, so I quickly grab them on my way past.
As we head down the stairs, Steve stops and turns to me and Maz. “Don’t you two do anything stupid. Let’s leave this to them.” He glances at the folded plans in my hand. “They seem to know how to deal with this strange shit.”
“I’ll see if I can dig anything up at the station about Charlotte Slayter, and the Sarge wants a full breakdown on the chapel anyway,” Teddy says, checking his watch. “Let’s meet at the coffee shop at three thirty, before we come back here. Deal?”
Steve checks his watch. “Shit! Joseph will have me working all night if I don’t get back. I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it for three thirty.”
Maz pulls him tight to her, pressing her lips to his. “You better.”
We continue through the restaurant, then out of the door and back onto Main Street. A cool blast of air greets us. Teddy and Steve walk off in opposite directions.
Maz turns to me. “What the hell is an Enchanter and how can I be one?” She raises her hand, turning it through the cool breeze. “Am I magic too?”
I pull on the door handle, closing the cinema door, dragging my hand down the glass. Penny. “They weren’t going to give us any answers. Not yet anyway.”
Maz shakes her head. “I don’t trust them.”
Stephanie’s memory plays through my mind. She couldn’t hide her true thoughts when we connected. She wanted to show me I could trust her. But I still need answers. I still need to search for Penny. I can’t sit in school acting like everything is fine. To hell with who is watching me.
Excitement flashes in Maz’s eyes. “We aren’t going back to school, are we?” she asks.
I rub my thumb over Penny’s twine engagement ring. “No way. We’re going back to the Chapel.”
11:47 GMT-4
MERIDIA UNIVERSITY | MERIDIA FALLS
“How can you trust them?” Maz asks, stopping at the bottom of the chapel steps. She takes a deep breath and looks through the trees in the direction of the cinema. “You don’t know them.” Thrusting her hands against her hips, she turns away. “You don’t know them at all.”
“It feels like I do. With Stephanie, at least,” I say. “I connected with her… I was in her mind, I knew what she was thinking. I just know I can trust her.”
Maz raises her eyebrow and her lip twitches into the hint of a grin. “Did you connect with the other girl, too?”
“Kind of,” I say, ignoring the smirk. “She seemed OK and she did help me.”
The grin disappears as Maz draws her finger across her cheek. “Your freaky orange veins.”
“Yeah… My freaky orange veins.” I shake away the intense memory of the rage and unfold the crypt plans, fighting with them in the wind. “There’s three stairwells on these plans. If they built the crypt, then there should be stairs.”
Maz takes the plans. “It looks like they built the chapel over the back of the crypt. I think we came up through the end stairwell.” A sudden gust of wind threatens to pull the plans from her grasp. She grips them tight and glances through the trees behind the parking lot. “We should check over there. There’s two outbuildings behind the trees.”
She strolls through the empty parking lot, heading towards a small brick building hiding between two oak trees. A thin concrete path leads the way.
Maz stops and waits for me to catch up, tapping her finger at the plans. “This building is close to this stairwell.” Small drops of water splash onto the paper. Maz looks up to the sky. “Great. Just what we need. More freakin’ rain.”
“It could be a tool shed.” I reach for the dull brass handle on the wooden door. I tug at the handle, but the door doesn’t budge. “It’s locked.” I check around us to make sure no one can see us and then kick at the door. It swings open, banging against the darkened wall inside, sending a deep echo between the trees. “Unlocked,” I say.
Maz raises her eyebrow. “Subtle, Newbie. Very subtle.” She glances over her shoulder at the chapel. “You should have played a little fanfare, too, you know, just in case they didn’t hear you kick the door off its hinges.”
The rain falls faster, making tiny dark dots on the concrete path. As we go inside the building, I flick an old-style brass light switch on the wall just inside the open door and a small bulb lights up. It flickers and swings from the ceiling, almost in protest at being turned on. The light shines on dirty gardening tools lined up against the wall. “Crap. It is just a tool shed,” I say.
Maz folds up the chapel plans. “Look at this, though.” She kneels, placing her hand on the floor. “This concrete is clean, bright white.” Dark spots form around her hand as the rain blows in from outside. She stands and walks over to a wheelbarrow hanging on the back wall and flicks a chunk of mud from the wheel. It splatters on the clean floor. She looks at it thoughtfully as she rubs her finger and thumb together. “If someone brought muddy tools in and out of here, every day, then the floor would be dirty.” She tilts her head back and sniffs. “It smells like new, wet concrete.” I kneel and rub my hand over the floor.
“Fresh concrete,” Maz says. “Didn’t I tell you? My dad had his own construction firm, before Isaac ‘The Bastard’ Steele drove him out of town.” She half-smiles. “It’s a shame you didn’t get me on the history assignment. My immediate family has a juicy past.”
Penny.
Maz rubs my shoulder. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think… We’ll find her.” She kicks at the floor with her heel. “Something was covered up - recently,” she says.
“There’s no guarantee it was stairs, though,” I say. “Could just be what it looks like. A new floor.”
Maz scrunches up her nose and unfolds the plans again. “Let’s check the other building.”
The rain is heavier now; the breezy wind makes it feel ten times as strong. Maz pulls up her hood and steps outside. I pull on my wooly hat and follow her.
“You need a hood in Meridia Falls,” Maz says, as she charges through the rain. “All freakin’ year.”
The other outbuilding is directly across from us, in between more oak trees. Shit! Someone walks out of it. The scientist. I pull Maz back behind a thick tree trunk. She’s got her head buried deep in the damp plans and hasn’t noticed him.
“Look,” I say. “It’s him from last night. The scientist. He’s dragging something out of the building.”
“Penny?” Maz says.
“No. It’s a stack of boxes,” I say. “He’s got them on a hand cart.” We peer around the tree, watching as he struggles to drag the hand cart along the path.
“Look,” Maz says, pointing to the chapel. “Reverend Matthews.”
He slips and slides on the damp grass, crashing into the hand cart, sending the top box tumbling to the floor. The scientist whacks the reverend across the arm and picks up the fallen box. Then they both make their way along the path, back up to the chapel, the reverend now pulling the trolley.
“Come on,” Maz says. “Let’s follow them.”
/> My eyes remain fixed on the outbuilding between the trees. “No, let’s have a look in that other building first. He’s just brought the boxes from somewhere… The crypt. There might be stairs in there.”
We carefully run between the trees to the other building. It’s the same size as the one we just left – and the door is wide open.
“Crap. It’s just the same as the other one,” I say, dropping to my knees. I drag my hand over the concrete floor. “Shit!” The concrete is hot. I pull my hand tight to my chest.
“Your hand,” Maz says, concern in her eyes. “Is it hurting again?”
I flex my fingers. “No. It’s the floor. It’s hot.”
Maz hovers her hand over the concrete. “Jesus Christ. What’s going on?” she asks. “Magic?”
I peer through the door at the chapel entrance through the trees. “Maybe he’s a super-fast floor layer.”
“I watched my dad pour loads of concrete and it never gave off heat.” Maz shakes her head. “We’ll not find anything in here; let’s go.”
The rain eases as we zig-zag between the trees to the chapel. We wait behind a wide pine as the scientist and the reverend wheel the hand cart inside, leaving the chapel door open behind them. “Come on,” I say, almost grabbing Maz’s hands.
“Careful,” she says. “Unless you want another trip through my mind.” She glances at my hands. “You need to wear your gloves.”
I pull out my gloves from my pocket and Maz half-smiles as I slip them on. We slowly climb the steps and wait by the open chapel door, listening.
“That’s the last of it. I want to take these files to Vault Six myself,” the scientist says. “They’re too valuable to let out of my sight.”
“I’m relieved,” Reverend Matthews says. “I didn’t like the police knocking on the chapel door. The Partners said we were safe here.”
“Well, you won’t have anything to worry about now. Not for a while anyway. Although they will want to reopen the vault when the dust dies down,” the scientist says. “The countdown is running and the Transfer is fast approaching.”
